Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!proxftl.UUCP!bill From: bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: science, lawfulness, a (the?) god Message-ID: <19880830031753.2.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: 30 Aug 88 03:17:00 GMT Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 95 Approved: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu To: novavax!uflorida!comp-ai-digest Path: proxftl!bill From: T. William Wells Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: science, lawfulness, a (the?) god Date: Thu, 25 Aug 88 22:22 EDT References: <19880822015621.2.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Reply-To: T. William Wells Organization: Proximity Technology, Ft. Lauderdale Lines: 77 Summary: Expires: Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: Keywords: In a previous article, YLIKOSKI@FINFUN.BITNET writes: : In AIList Digest V8 #54, T. Michael O'Leary : presents the following quotation (without mentioning who originally : wrote it): : > >Science, though not scientists (unfortunately), rejects the : > >validity of religion: it requires that reality is in some sense : > >utterly lawful, and that the unlawful, i.e. god, has no place. I did. : I would say that a God needs not be unlawful. A counterexample of : some kind could be a line by Einstein: I think he said that the : regularity of the structure of the universe reflects an intellect. (I : cannot remember the exact form of the quotation, but I think the idea : was this.) "Lawful" does not mean "following, by choice, law", rather, it means: "constrained by law". However, religion posits "god" or "the absolute" or what have you as that which is beyond, above, determines, flouts, or whatever adjective you like, natural law. This is essential to religion. And the "quotation" from Einstein does not serve as a counterexample; it is just a restatement of the argument from design. This argument goes: "the universe appears to have been designed, therefore there was a designer. I shall call it god." How silly! In its refined form, this argument posits god as a "primary cause": this makes god "beyond" natural law, as an explanation for natural law. It is trivially refuted by pointing out that it begs the question. (If the universe requires a cause, why shouldn't god require a cause? And if not, why presume god anyway?) --- While I am wasting bandwidth religion-trashing, I'll share some E-mail I received the other day. I will include the text of it here, but I am stripping out the identifying marks so as to not further embarrass the author. : You are offbase in your premise. Religion (for lack of a much better term) : is *not* based on that which is unknowable. It is simply that it is based : on revealed knowlede/information from God. Note the confusion in this individual: he talks about "revealed knowledge" as if it had some relationship to knowledge; however, there is *no* relationship. By what means do I distinguish this "revealed knowledge" from an LSD overdose? If I am to depend wholly on divine revalation, then I know *nothing*. If not, then I must reject "revealed knowledge" in favor of evidence. This is all elementary philosophy, to which religion seems to have blinded that author. : This knowlede transcends human : intellect and is not deducible via human intellect. This translates to: "this knowledge is unknowable". : This should not present a : problem for you as Quantuum Mechanics has demonstrated that the Universe does : not operate via a human understandable system of logic. And this is simple ignorance. Not to mention self-contradictory. --- This individual has managed to illustrate in one very short note *exactly* why religion has *no* place in scientific discussion: the use of religion perverts reasoning by substituting "revealed knowledge" for evidence, requires the unknowable as part of reasoning, and uses ignorance as its justification. --- Bill novavax!proxftl!bill